Debating miracles and religious experience

Overview

Recall questions on the impact on belief and practice, dependence of religious communities, whether one definition can serve, Hume's challenges, Swinburne's replies, and the bearing of evil.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What impact do religious experiences have on belief and practice? Give the case for a large impact.

   Model answer

   They found traditions, drive revivals, sustain believers under persecution and turn inherited doctrine into personal conviction.

2. 2

   Give the case that their impact is smaller than claimed.

   Model answer

   Most believers never have one, communities persist for centuries between them, and the reports come from people already committed.

3. 3

   Are religious communities entirely dependent on religious experience? Give the case that they are.

   Model answer

   Every major tradition traces itself to a founding encounter, and communities that lose all sense of the numinous tend to decline into social organisations.

4. 4

   Give the case that they are not.

   Model answer

   Scripture, law, ritual, education and belonging sustain communities perfectly well, and traditions are often suspicious of experiential claims.

5. 5

   How adequate are the different definitions of a miracle? Give the case that one definition can serve.

   Model answer

   Swinburne's combines the two features every claimant asserts — that the event was extraordinary and that it meant something — and covers most cases.

6. 6

   Give the case that no single definition is adequate.

   Model answer

   Aquinas, Hume, Holland and Swinburne describe genuinely different phenomena, and forcing them into one definition loses what each was tracking.

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